#WeddingWednesday: My Table Settings and Headaches

Ahhh, the wedding table settings. The most photographed, pinned and social-media shareable aspect of the wedding… and the least important.

I have to say that knowing how popular wedding table settings have become on Pinterest, I became a bit neurotic and overwhelmed by what my table settings could possibly look like. My table settings took over my wedding planning life, because I became obsessive with what color palette I would choose and if and how possibly could I incorporate it into the rest of the wedding. Then the second guessing and the endless stream of questions wouldn’t stop from there. Did the color palette go with the invites? Did it go with the ribbons on the bouquets? What about the groomsmen bowties? And what if the catering company doesn’t have the exact shade of grey that I need? Should I have a lighter tablecloth and darker napkins? Or darker tablecloth and lighter napkins? How should I fold the napkins? Where will the menu go. Oh crap, what does my menu look like? Should I have gold to match the venue or silver because… uh… grey? I don’t really like silver. Ok but I guess silver is a little cheaper. Ok well catering company doesn’t have gold anyway so problem solved. Wait, no gold? Now I have to redesign my invites!!!

And so on and so on it went, until I was bipolar between fits of genius and hysteria. I even called my maid of honor 5 days before my wedding crying asking her if battery-operated candles were going to completely ruin the vibe of my table. Of course she talked me off of a cliff, and even though I was forced to go with the battery operated candles (dang historic building codes) they ended up being used as faux lighters (or… glowsticks?) to wave back in forth later in the night, which turned out to be a hilarious twist of fate, and great story to tell.

A few more details about the wedding tables:

1. My mom and her friends made all the garlands and center pieces. Yup, you heard that right. Nothing saves money like a little DIY, so she hopped on over, or maybe climbed over, to a neighbors house to ‘borrow’ some bay leaves which are plentiful in Northern California, and then hosted a day before wedding assembly line with her girlfriends to put these together. I’ll admit, I was skeptical, but this was the one thing that I relegated to my mom and once I sat down at the head table I was blown away by how full they were!

2. I worked with 2 rental companies to get the varied plates and glassware that I wanted. However, now looking back on the photos, I just noticed that the smoke grey, french dimpled glass water glasses that I ordered are NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. I mean, I literally just noticed. Is it too late to get my money back? I guess I don’t really care anymore but the point is you don’t notice… until you do. So promise me I had other plans for the glasses!

3. My favorite part of the table settings were the mini splits of champagne at everyone’s seat. We thought they would be fun to open all together during my parent’s first toast, or they could be taken home and doubled as favors. To drink the champagne with class, I ordered custom krazy straws that said S ‘heart’ J in cursive, except for the Bride and Groom’s seat, which was spelled out. The only thing here is that if you look closely, you will see the the ‘Bride’ and ‘Groom’ straws accidentally were placed in the wrong spots, but no worries, our awesome friends rearranged them before we got there!

4. For our escort cards, we used corks (not particularly original) but since we have 5781379 at home from our excessive boozing we are able to actually choose red stained ones to indicate meat, and white or non-stained ones to indicate fish. I thought it was a fun little detail that probably no one else noticed. But I can tell you it took forever to pick the ones that were stained dark enough to make it obvious!

So after all the reading you are probably just as stressed out as I was planning the tables, so scroll through the beautifully documented photography by Amanda Crean to calm you down.

That’s it! What do you think of how it turned out? Do you have any funny stories about how the table settings or wedding planning went for you?

Please feel free to comment with any questions you have regarding where I found things, or custom design ideas for your wedding, including menus, table numbers or color scheme ideas. I have lots of ideas for future events and weddings and would love to help out!